The Mitre, therefore, saw in Sir George a very fine gentleman indeed, set him down to an excellent supper in its best room, and promised a post-chaise-and-four for the following morning--all with much bowing and scraping, and much mention of my lord to whose house he would post.

For in those days, if a fine gentleman was a very fine gentleman, a peer was also a peer.

Quite recently they had ventured to hang one; but with apologies, a landau-and-six, and a silken halter.
Sir George would not have had the least pretension to be the glass of fashion and the mould of form, which St.James's Street considered him, if he had failed to give a large share of his thoughts while he supped to the beautiful woman he had quitted.

He knew very well what steps Lord March or Tom Hervey would take, were either in his place; and though he had no greater taste for an irregular life than became a man in his station who was neither a Methodist nor Lord Dartmouth, he allowed his thoughts to dwell, perhaps longer than was prudent, on the girl's perfections, and on what might have been were his heart a little harder, or the not over-rigid rule which he observed a trifle less stringent.
The father was dead.

The girl was poor: probably her ideal of a gallant was a College beau, in second-hand lace and stained linen, drunk on ale in the forenoon.